Yes, you can. There are several methods for publishing open access even if you’re not in receipt of funder funds.

• Publish in a ‘no charge’ open access journal. (You can filter DOAJ to find these journals)
• Publish in a normal subscription journal and deposit into ORA using the ‘green OA’ route.
• The University’s 2018 Open Access policy asks authors to deposit all research outputs into ORA.

Do note: Oxford authors whose work will be submitted to the REF are subject to certain requirements regardless of their funder status.

The process of publishing Open Access refers to multiple versions of an author’s paper (or manuscript) the most used are:

• PrePrint: This will be a version of your research you distributed via a PrePrint server (for more information on PrePrints see our PrePrints resource page)
• Submitted: This is the version of your manuscript which you sent to a publisher.
• Author Accepted Manuscript: This is the version of your research after peer review and edits have been made but before publisher formatting. This is traditionally a Word or LaTex document.
  • You can sometimes locate the AAM on your specific publisher’s submission software.
• Version of Record: This is the final published version of your research after publisher formatting and typesetting has been added

The LSE Versions toolkit is useful in understanding the different versions and has some good tips for authors.

The date of acceptance is when the publisher has firmly accepted your output for publication. It could be the date you, as author, considered you have been told by the editor of the acceptance of the paper even in an informal email.

This will be after peer review, edits and other alterations have been made. You may have received ‘provisional’ or ‘conditional’ acceptance before this date, but these are not the ‘date of acceptance.’

The University of Oxford academic community is strongly committed to ensuring the widest possible access to its research. The value and utility of research outputs increases the more broadly they are available to be considered and used by others. The University is very active in disseminating research both for the benefit of the international research community and for society more widely. Access to Oxford’s published research, for everyone, from everywhere, will highlight the excellence of its research, attract scholars and students, and foster collaboration.

The University introduced an Open Access policy in March 2018 which can be found on the Open Access at Oxford page. It asks academics, researchers and research students to provide Open Access to research outputs by depositing accepted manuscripts into our institutional repository ORA.

Other staff who publish (librarians/professional/admin/support staff) are also strongly encouraged to deposit.

Plan S

Plan S is an initiative for Open Access publishing that was launched in September 2018. Plan S requires that, from 2021, scientific publications that result from research funded by public grants must be published in compliant Open Access journals or platforms.

cOAlition S

An international consortium of research funding and performing organisations. You can find a list of current cOAlition S members on their website.

These funders include: Wellcome, The ERC, UKRI and Gates foundation.

Oxford University researchers with questions should contact the OA Helpdesk

If an author is funder eligible, Oxford will cover the entire OA fee for all Oxford affiliated corresponding authors. When a funder eligible corresponding author from another institution is required to make the article OA, we would expect that institution to cover those charges.

If multiple authors from differing institutions are required to make an article open access, Oxford will seek to share those costs fairly. In all cases, if an Oxford author requires OA to be funder compliant, Oxford will cover the OA charges if other institutions are unable.

Oxford University and the Bodleian Libraries have signed up to several agreements with publishers. These agreements allow Oxford authors (even unfunded ones) to publish open access in listed journal titles.

To be applicable for the agreements, corresponding authors should use their ox.ac.uk ending email when submitting and select the CC BY licence when prompted.

Please go to our publisher deals page for a comprehensive list of publishers and deals offered.

On terminology

Transformative agreement

They are known as transformative agreements if they aim to transition towards a full open access model per the ideals of Plan S and other funders.

Read and Publish

They are known as Read and Publish deals when they cover both subscription (read) and Article Processing Charge (OA publishing) payments.

Not necessarily, it will depend on the particular publisher agreement and sometimes on the journal title. If you are unsure, please contact the APC team to check (apc@bodleian.ox.ac.uk).

The University’s OA policy covers all research outputs by Oxford University authors. ORA welcomes the deposit of all Oxford-affiliated papers (and other publication types).

Research/Academic positions will usually be given an Elements account on entry to the University, but other members of staff may apply for an account. This includes Junior research fellows, PostDocs, retired Fellows, Emeritus Professors and DPhils.

Please click on this link to view the ORA depositing policy.

Depositing into ORA is a safe way to ensure your work is made open as quickly as feasible while being compliant with the REF and other funder mandates.

You will not ‘get in trouble’ for depositing an accepted manuscript. The ORA team follow the rules for deposit required by each publisher when they process your item. Any open access material on ORA has been assessed by the team as appropriate for release. This includes the application of any embargos required by the publisher.

The publisher’s version (aka: version of record) of your work is often under copyright to the publisher and cannot be deposited elsewhere. This would include social media sites such as ResearchGate and our institutional repository, ORA.

However, if you have published via any of the publisher-made open access routes (Gold, Hybrid or Platinum) you may deposit the final version of your research as it will be licensed to allow this.

You should deposit the Author Accepted Manuscript (AAM) in ORA, even if you are also depositing in other repositories such as ArXiv, BioRxiv, EuropePMC or SSRN. Other sites do not necessarily meet the metadata requirements of the REF policy (e.g. collecting date of acceptance, which is required as part of the REF submission) or the open access requirements of funder policy (e.g. correct version deposited). Furthermore, depositing into ORA can boost the findability of your research and ensures an in-house controlled version of your research which will ensure funder compliance in the event of an issue with the publisher version.

If you are posting an accepted manuscript on arXiv or other preprint server please label it as such, for example in the Comments or Notes:

‘Accepted Manuscript’, ‘Accepted for publication in [Journal Title] on [date]’)

If there isn’t a specific ‘version’ field.

If your funder requires open access in Europe PMC, you will probably need to deposit the manuscript there yourself, unless your article is Gold open access (in which case the publisher should do it for you).

Definitely. All Oxford researchers are asked to deposit into ORA on acceptance. If the final PDF is not available in this timeframe, please deposit the accepted manuscript and the team will ensure the published version is available after publication.

By depositing the AAM you have met the requirements of Act on Acceptance and you do not need to also submit a later version.

However, if for any reason you need to deposit a later, different version or additional file you can amend the Elements record.

Books and book chapters are not currently part of the REF, nor most funders’ open access requirements. Books and book chapters would not need to be open access to be considered as a 2021 ‘REFable’ output.

Some exceptions apply: ERC, Wellcome and the post-2024 UKRI policies include monographs.

You can, of course, deposit regardless as many publishers allow the deposit of book chapters. To learn more, please see our open monographs page.

Please deposit. Depositing into ORA will allow you access to an open access, Oxford controlled version of your research so you can guarantee funder and REF compliance. This will also aid the discovery, dissemination, and preservation of Oxford research.

No, there only needs to be one record of your manuscript in the Elements system. It’s important to claim the existing record rather than creating a new, duplicate record. Other Oxford authors can ‘claim’ a record to ensure the item is attached to their elements account.

Here’s the procedure for co-authors:

• Author A creates a record in Elements and deposits their manuscript.
  • Includes any Oxford co-authors when filling in the deposit form.
  • Deposits the accepted manuscript
• Author B searches for the article title, finds the record, `Claims’ it.
  • If it hasn’t got a deposited copy attached, Author B can then deposit their own version.